A fierce clattering of the sounder on Connolly’s table tore into the sentence, and in the midst of it Maxwell shot out his arms and drew a deep breath.
“Thank God!” he ejaculated, “they’ve caught the Mail! Now I’ll go with you, Calvin.” And then to Connolly: “Straighten things out for those fellows at the tunnel as quickly as you can, Dan, and get the wheels in motion again. Order up the engine from Second Seventeen if they need power to get that raffle out of the tunnel, and have somebody send over to Lopez Canyon for Benson to take charge. If you want to reach me, I’ll be over at the hotel.”
At the Hotel Topaz, across the plaza from the railroad head-quarters building, Maxwell saw his friend and sometime college classmate properly registered for a comfortable suite, and otherwise hospitably provided for before the pair of them went to smoke their bedtime pipes in the deserted writing-room facing the plaza.
“It’s just my luck, Calvin, to be homeless about every other time you happen along,” Maxwell apologized, when the pipes were lighted. “Alice’s father and mother came through from California a few days ago, and carried her and the children off with them to New York and the Long Island shore. I’m a widower.”
“That’s all right,” laughed the big man. “I’m going to be here in your midst for a month or more, and I wouldn’t think of camping down on you for that length of time, anyway. To-morrow you’ll chase out and help me find a couple of office rooms where I can set up a small laboratory; and after that I’ll go out in the woods and dig dirt—which it is my official nature so to do. That’s enough about me. How are you getting along with the railroad wreckers?”
Maxwell lighted his pipe and answered categorically.
“We have heard nothing more, directly, from the Wall Street people since that break they made a few weeks ago trying to hold up the proxies I was sending to President Ford in New York,” was Maxwell’s summing up of the current situation. “But Ford assures me from time to time that they haven’t quit. The latest competition rate ruling by the Interstate Commerce Commission makes it absolutely necessary for them to own or control a shorter line than their present one to Southern California points—this in order to protect their holdings in the big stock pool. They’d have what they need if they could corral the Nevada Short Line and tie it in with the Transcontinental’s branch at Copah. Ford says they seem to consider it only a question of time until they absorb us. The T-C. people are spending a lot of money on their Jack’s Canyon branch, putting it in shape for heavy traffic; and they can’t hope to get the traffic unless they get us.”
“This tunnel trouble to-night had nothing to do with the fight, I suppose?” queried Sprague reflectively.
“Oh, no. That was merely the outgrowth of a curious sort of letting down that comes once in a while on every railroad, no matter how well it may be manned or handled. Our let-down has been coming on gradually ever since we got over the ‘Wire-Devil’ scare. Men, good men who have been with us for years, take chances that would make your hair stand on end. Like this to-night,” and he went on to describe the causes which had led up to the near-tragedy at Tunnel Number Three.
“I see,” said Sprague. And then: “You say you are electrifying? I thought that was a luxury in which only the rich Eastern roads could indulge; and then only for their city terminals.”